Dr Who - The Brink of Disaster
Obverse Books charity anthology
Dalek in LondonThe New MachinesHidden PlanetOperation WerewolfThe Big Store Brain-Dead
Six adventures for Dr Who...
A Dalek on the streets of London, a new planet in the solar system, a terrible Saturday afternoon out shopping and the entire world sent to sleep.
Dr Who must face threats which lead the world to the brink of disaster. Notes: The last series of the radio show was something I thought should be a little bit different. Rather than doing rewrites of stories that had been on TV, what if the series was made up of stories that had been written for TV but never actually got made? The important thing was that they had to be stories that were proposed before 1974 and also it was important that they hadn't been turned into audios or novels before. So, six episodes were selected, a back-story was written and putative writers assigned so that the authors of these short stories knew who they were channelling. All things considered, I think this worked out very well. Hidden Planet was a story I first heard of (like many, I suspect) when DWM did its legendary April Fool story, The Phoenix Rises. The idea of another planet sharing Earth's orbit was also the basis for a Gerry Anderson movie called... Doppelganger, I think? Anyway,whatever it was called I didn't want to do a version of that and I can't imagine Malcolm Hulke would have been keen on that either, so I came up with something different, another reason for there being another Earth. Malcolm Hulke liked to question authority and ask moral questions so that was the route I took. I'm pretty happy with it. Are you Being Served? was a real favourite of mine when I was a kid. It's not so easy to watch these days without wincing from time to time. I don't think it should be cancelled or written out of history but there's no denying that the world had changed in the 50+ years since AYBS? started. Anyway, when The Big Store was inked in, I kew it should have a flavour of AYBS about it. I felt that would give the readers a lot of shorthand clues to the store and the people in it. It also meant that whoever got to write it would get the chance to do some AYBS? style dialogue. I was not the first choice for this story but the original writer was busy with another project so I took it on. To finish the series, I thought a monster story was required. I liked to have at least two monster stories per series and finishing with one seemed obvious to me. The Ice Warriors are an interesting, menacing race and I liked what little I found out about Brian Hayles' pitch for Brain-Dead, so I blagged that one. It was a bit different from other Ice Warriors stories and gave me the chance to focus on a couple of the companions while keeping Dr Who prominent. I really wish the Beeb hadn't cancelled the series after this run. Still, at least there are the Christmas specials...
A Dalek on the streets of London, a new planet in the solar system, a terrible Saturday afternoon out shopping and the entire world sent to sleep.
Dr Who must face threats which lead the world to the brink of disaster. Notes: The last series of the radio show was something I thought should be a little bit different. Rather than doing rewrites of stories that had been on TV, what if the series was made up of stories that had been written for TV but never actually got made? The important thing was that they had to be stories that were proposed before 1974 and also it was important that they hadn't been turned into audios or novels before. So, six episodes were selected, a back-story was written and putative writers assigned so that the authors of these short stories knew who they were channelling. All things considered, I think this worked out very well. Hidden Planet was a story I first heard of (like many, I suspect) when DWM did its legendary April Fool story, The Phoenix Rises. The idea of another planet sharing Earth's orbit was also the basis for a Gerry Anderson movie called... Doppelganger, I think? Anyway,whatever it was called I didn't want to do a version of that and I can't imagine Malcolm Hulke would have been keen on that either, so I came up with something different, another reason for there being another Earth. Malcolm Hulke liked to question authority and ask moral questions so that was the route I took. I'm pretty happy with it. Are you Being Served? was a real favourite of mine when I was a kid. It's not so easy to watch these days without wincing from time to time. I don't think it should be cancelled or written out of history but there's no denying that the world had changed in the 50+ years since AYBS? started. Anyway, when The Big Store was inked in, I kew it should have a flavour of AYBS about it. I felt that would give the readers a lot of shorthand clues to the store and the people in it. It also meant that whoever got to write it would get the chance to do some AYBS? style dialogue. I was not the first choice for this story but the original writer was busy with another project so I took it on. To finish the series, I thought a monster story was required. I liked to have at least two monster stories per series and finishing with one seemed obvious to me. The Ice Warriors are an interesting, menacing race and I liked what little I found out about Brian Hayles' pitch for Brain-Dead, so I blagged that one. It was a bit different from other Ice Warriors stories and gave me the chance to focus on a couple of the companions while keeping Dr Who prominent. I really wish the Beeb hadn't cancelled the series after this run. Still, at least there are the Christmas specials...